I'm in the middle of a vacuum hose job, and so far so good. I'm kinda tall 6'1" so I find my back aching alot when working on certain parts of my FD. I found that after the battery, intercooler, and intake was removed at the start of the process, its actually pretty easy to get comfortable if you sit on the nose area, while you spread eagle the AST with your feet on the chasis. Anyone else ever take this approach??

All is good with the hose job so far. I'm in the process of putting new hoses on now, rasts nest out. No broken solenoids, one broken check valve, but I ordered 5 new check valves and a set of 10 barbed nipples from mcmaster.com. $51 with next day air. Also, $16 for a new throttle body/UIM gasket.

 

i remove the radiator and stand in that area that opens up. I will not sit on a cars nose or body. especially a customers none the less.( not saying you are sitting on someone else's car ) but i hear you on the back pain. I am 6'2" and take the hood off as well as what i said earlier. it's a curse.

 

Yeah it's my car, lol. I just hated leaning over the fender. I could only stand it for about ten minutes before I'd have to let my back regroup. Most of my weight is actually on my feet on the chasis, kind of like a catchers positions. If I knew I was gonna break or bend something, I wouldnt do it.

BTW, its nice to have a nickname like the rasts nest for that cluster of hoses, but i think when you take off the UIM and see the whole deal, that should be called the " snake pit" or "frat guy with a bad hair day"

 

If I know I'm doing a job that's going to take a while (something like a vacuum hose job), I find it easier to put the car on jack stands to work on it. That way I'm not bending over as far. I can get a lot more done without killing my back this way.

 

snake pit is good! i have heard Madusa head before on here.

The other reason i can't do what your talking about is my knees are shot. after 1 minute of squating i have to get a cane to get up And as Mahjik said i assume you are on jack stands already..

Time to make a rotory rascal!!

 

no jack stands right now, I just did it that way to mainly get the rasts nest out. I think i saw a post a while back about a guy saying you should do a mission impossible over the engine bay. Now that would be cool from some garage rafters!

 

i counted five check valves on the hose diagram. Can i replace all of those five with the five i bought from mcmaster.com or just a few of them? I've read that some are different from others but some people like damian use them for each one. Any problems with that long term?

 

That's funny you bring this up, i just got in from doing some more on my vacuum hose job and i am only like 5' 8" at most so i fit in there perfect and it's not so bad except i have to stretch my knees every so often. On the vac job.. if i remove the fpr solenoid like everyone says you can, do i just connect that vac line to the uim?

 

Yes. The FPR measures the air pressure/vac in the manifold and adjusts fuel pressure accordingly to maintain the preset gradient. EG: at 0psi/0vac the fuel pressure is ~38psi. At 10psi of boost the fuel pressure will increase to 48psi, but the gradient will still be 38 (48-10=38).

 

Awesome thanks, i knew honda did that cause i work on them all the time :/ but i didn't know if mazda did it differently. Why is there a solenoid on this fpr then?

 

Nope.

But my back was killing me when I was doing the vacuum job as well. I found out that if I lied on the fender sort of like Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible" but without the piano wires, it was very comfortable.